Audeamus
by DigitalRez
Summary: There was nothing, physically, wrong with Jim. But the burning continued no matter how many times he reassured himself with that fact. It had been continuing for eight years, and he was quietly, desperately afraid that he knew why. "You see, Kirk," Khan says. He knows this conversation. He's walked these words before. "Pain is perception."
1. Chapter 1

The list, if printed out onto paper, would've been long enough to run the length of Kirk's entire arm twice. Spock read it aloud in his staccato monotone, barely giving himself time to breathe in between words. He had timed his pace to match the captain's down to the step, utterly synchronized as they traversed the corridors of the ___Enterprise_. He tapped his vidscreen as he talked, patently oblivious to the mounting unrest in his captain's face.

"Okay. Spock, seriously? Are you really gonna read me the inventory list? We're on shore leave, give it a rest."

Spock paused, calmly bookmarking his place with a single tap to the screen. He folded his arms behind his back and took in his captain's agitation the only way a Vulcan can.

"We are not released from duty until the ___Enterprise_ docks and the crew has departed the ship entirely."

"That's a technicality."

"Vulcans embrace such technicalities. Until the ship docks, I intend to carry out my regular duties as planned."

Jim stops him, cutting off their briskly-paced harmony. He looks at him earnestly, enunciating his words with a gesture.

"That's great. Really. But do me a favor and relax, okay? Three weeks, Spock, and then you can beat me to death with your inventory lists as much as you want. Go home, Spock. Do… Whatever it is Vulcans do for fun. Right?"

Spock looks down at his vidscreen, then slowly shuts it off and places it behind his back with all the diplomacy he can muster. Kirk's lips hitch, smiling half-heartedly. He claps him on the shoulder, and then carries on the way he was before. Spock watches him, their synchronization broken. Then he frowns, tapered eyebrows strung together. He reopens his vidscreen, typing at a brisk consistency. McCoy replies almost immediately, which Spock notes as odd and files it away for later review.

_'____What do you mean Jim's acting weird? Spock, only page me for a medical emergency. This can wait.'_

_'____I must disagree, doctor. I believe the captain's odd behavior directly correlates with your line of work. I myself have noticed physical symptoms and out-of-place behaviors.'_

_'____Okay, you've got my attention. Tell me what you know.'_

Spock compiled a list of anomalies in the captain's behavior and dated each of them, the earliest having manifested days before. He sent McCoy his evidence and waited the appropriate amount of time for the CMO to review it.

_'____I'll make Jim submit to a physical before he leaves the ship- it's standard procedure anyway.'_

_'____Thank you, doctor.'_

_'____Don't thank me, Spock. It makes me uncomfortable.'_

* * *

The burning had started again.

It clawed, viciously hot, at the underside of his skin.

Bones had bitched and whined for an hour until Jim had sat down on a medical berth. But unsurprisingly, his results had come back as painfully normal.

There was nothing, physically, wrong with Jim. But the burning continued no matter how many times he reassured himself with that fact. It had been continuing for eight years, and he was quietly, desperately afraid that he knew why.

The rain descends in thick rivulets over London, overcasted sky hanging low like a watercolor painting, streetlamps bathing the avenues yellow. Jim hikes his duffel up over his shoulder, the bag full of his limited assortment of personal items- Starfleet had substituted any and all superfluous needs with regulation-issue replacements.

London breathed in and out around him, undulating like river water as he caught the H shuttle to his flat uptown.

When he stepped down off onto the grated platform he was met by a one-man welcoming committee.

The collective atoms of everything around him scattered, repiecing themselves at their basest levels when he remembered to breathe again. Rain troughed at his chin, streaking his face, dousing his hair. It beaded off his soft leather jacket and dripped onto his shoes, but he stood there still, savoring the feeling of a flower of unmatchable loathing bloom in the center of his chest. It felt as though chains had been lashed around his ribs, slowly crushing his lungs.

Khan's svelte build and features were muted by the strikingly ordinary clothes he wore- a button-down, pants, shoes the precise color and sheen of ink, a jacket.

Kirk pivoted on one heel, feeling his teeth lock into a viselike grip, and brusquely began to walk away. He expected that Khan would let him go, let him walk away with hatred stiffening his posture and face eloquent with rage. But in a move that was disarmingly Spock-like, the war criminal fell into step beside him.

"You've got a lot of balls, being here." Jim remarks as they exit the station. Uptown London opens up before them. There were more trees here, the air a little easier to breathe. The shuttle transports ran high above their heads, magnetized to the monorails they ran along, quietly zipping back and forth.

"Are you going to attack me, Captain, the way you did before?" Khan's voice was even, casual, quiet enough for Jim to hear and Jim alone.

"We both know that won't benefit either of us."

"I don't know," Jim growls, "punching you in the face a few times might be beneficial to me."  
Khan glances him over with his analytic, cold blue eyes. They were like pale diamonds boring into Jim with a savage sort of glitter.

He knows he shouldn't talk to him, the same monster who murdered the closest thing Jim ever got to a father- Christopher Pike- in cold blood, the same cruel terrorist who had threatened the lives of his precious crew. Speaking to him was showing him a kindness that he didn't deserve. It was excusing the brutal horror he had inflicted that could never be forgiven.

"You won't." Khan replies, and it isn't a challenge or a question but a statement. A known outcome.

"Why are you here?"

"You are in pain."

Jim jerks farther from him, thrown, and his hands twitch with the need to curl into fists, trying to mollify the agony that runs rampant through him. Khan notices, though, just as he notices every other miniscule motion the captain displays. His eyes are less like diamonds now, and more like scalpels. Jim can feel them cutting into his skin.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Finally the stoic calm breaks in Khan's face, replaced by basic contempt.

"Come now, Kirk. After eight years you still believe I could be so naive. I thought you would have learned not to underestimate my abilities."

They're on the cusp of a street corner, under a crosswalk light, the sidewalk bathed in dull red before them, night beginning its shift over that outlying suburb of London to gently lull its inhabitants to sleep. Jim looks sharply at Khan, pure broiling hatred on his face, etched into every pore, written across his body.

"___Underestimate your abilities?_ I haven't ___underestimated_ a single move you've made since you tried to kill my crew. You murdered a handful of Starfleet officers in cold blood because you wanted revenge for something that hadn't happened yet. You attacked my First Officer, knocked out my Chief Engineer, and crushed Alexander Marcus's skull between your hands. Don't think I don't know what you are or what you're capable of. Don't you dare."

Khan's eyes are bright, whether in interest or anger, Kirk can't make out. When he speaks, his voice drips with emotion from low in his chest.

"And what am I? Do you really think you can look me in my eyes and tell me what I am? You, who lies about the pain you can hardly stand?"

Jim's very being is cold, ice-water replacing his blood. it feels as though steel has wrapped itself around his bones. Any emotions he had simply freeze in the tundra of his body, nullified and useless. The crosswalk light is green, throwing shadows across their bodies, but neither man moves.

"Oh," Khan breathes, drinking in the horror and fear on Kirk's face, "I know about your ill-kept secret, Kirk. Did your doctor think he was the first who tried to synthesize my blood? There have been others who tried to make a weapon out of what lies below my skin, tried to make themselves as fast and strong as I am. Marcus himself hired a team to make a serum out of my blood that could make mortal men better."

Jim's fingers curled into fists, nails biting deep into the skin of his palms, hurricane-force pain ripping him open from the inside. A small, almost pitying smile played across Khan's lips, as if debating whether to take hold or not.

"Have you told them, yet? Your First Officer and your CMO, that your very blood is rebelling?"

"There's nothing-" Jim manages, voice strangled.

"No, there isn't," Khan interrupts. He knows this conversation. He's walked these words before, "Not physically. You see, Kirk," The smile he wear morphs into a smirk, knowing and imperious, "pain is perception."

The flower that had begun to bud in Kirk's chest, harboring poisonous hatred, was now fully exposed, petals and thorns piercing his body like prying fingers, blood hot and itching against his skin.

"What happened to them- the people who took the serum?"

Khan's gaze moves languidly to the crosswalk in front of them. The light had long since turned an angry red, spilling over his pale features, making him look like a creature straight from the depths of hell. The wind had changed the rain into a few spitting stormclouds overhead, the streets emptied out like spare change from pockets.

"They couldn't handle the repercussions- the… ___side-effects._ Their biological lifespan increased, and for a time they were even a bit stronger than they had been before. But the pain ultimately overcame them, the same itch in their veins, the same hunger. My blood, as it seems, is like liquor- pleasantly volatile."

Jim's expression turned instantly to horror, the hatred in him stalled by the rapid growth of a new emotion- undiluted fear. Khan observed it spread across his face with measured ease.

"Withdrawal."  
"Your reputation doesn't do your mind justice, Kirk. Yes, withdrawal. They all became addicted to my blood, and invariably they all died when supply did not meet demand. Marcus was horrified, shut down the program. It seems that I cannot be duplicated," He smiled at him quietly, but it was in no way a friendly smile, "only immitated."

Jim's vision reeled, the pain in his arms biting into his skin with serated teeth. Like magma rising in the throat of a volcano, the bile of panic brimmed at the back of his mouth, tasting of acid.

He tore away from Khan, leaving him standing with an unreadable demeanor at the crosswalk. Jim went home, breathing hard and moving as fast as he dared. He fumbled with the keys to his flat, pain breaking his vision into a dozen fragments. Once inside he dropped everything, leaning against the door, tasting his breath and closing his eyes. Everything around him seemed muted and out of focus. His pulse resonated in his ears, the rhythm of his breath like a second heartbeat. This was a pain foreign to him, stronger than any appeasing sedative. He couldn't grasp that the same thing that had saved him was now slowly destroying him. His heart pumped hard, sending an ache through his body. He'd given up taking painkillers months ago- his body had begun to dissolve them faster than they could dissolve their opiates. Tylenol, aspirin, ibuprofen, advil; useless.

Kirk sunk to the floor, dumping his duffel out. Two holoframes dropped from the cloth bag, a cell phone, cordless earbuds, his wallet, a number of printed photos, and a vidscreen. He picked this last item up with hands that tremored, tapping and typing without thinking about what he was doing.

He logged into the Starfleet database and drew up the appropriate file. Scanning it, he found what he was looking for and shut the device off. He sat, staring at the dark screen, a single line of digits running through his thoughts as his mind began to work again.

He repeated Khan's nine-digit identification code until each individual number became meaningless. It could be used like any phone number, any email address, any pager number. He picked up his cell phone, balancing it between either hand, its weight shifting from one palm to another as he juggled it idly.

He wouldn't've done it, he knew, if it wasn't for the dry, throbbing pain that ran throughout his body. He felt it up his spine, down his arms, under his eyelids, across his fists. It was omnipresent and vicious. And it made him type the nine numbers and the message, and send it. As soon as it was done, Jim let his head roll back and tried to unmake himself to a time before the pain existed.

_'____Eight years ago I saved your life'_, the message to Khan read.

_'____Help me.'_


	2. Chapter 2

The syringe had been obtained illegally, as had most things Khan now owned. Starfleet tracked his every motion and exchange, every blink and breath, but Khan's ingenuity was infinite and unfailing. He tucked it away in a pocket of his long black jacket, staring out the windowed wall of his apartment. Absently his fingers traced the anomalous device below his ear, just over his pulse point, no bigger than a dime and just as smooth.

The city woke up around him, respiring slowly as sunrise's rosy fingertips began to curl around it.

With hesitant hands he reaches back into his pocket, the cold ice of metal brushing against his skin. He pulls it out again, cradling the palm-sized injector with both hands. Gently he lays it flat, parallel to his skin, against the pale inside of his forearm. He glances out the window again, taking in the city groggily waking before him, and then plunges the needle with brutal force into his arm.

Scarlet blood fills the injector, an ache deep below his skin growing as the needle buries itself further. Thick, dark fluid drains itself into the vial. For a moment he's seized with the need to push it further, dig the needle to its hilt into his flesh, feel the blood well across the surface of his body, make the ache swell to a throbbing scream within him.

But it was _wrong_. To tear apart the surface alone, to destroy the pale skin that sheathed him. His hatred went far deeper than that, below skin and vein and blood, transcending bone and marrow to evade him.

Narrowing his lips into a tight line, Khan quells the urge and instead focuses his efforts on extracting the syringe, now heavy with the weight of his blood. Khan flexes the fist of the offended arm, pocketing the vial, eyes cryptic as he surveys London, the waking beast.

* * *

This dive was unlike the others Jim had found himself in over the years. The ambient lighting was a swirling vortex of lascivious, loud colors, that matched the drinks the bartender was serving- honeyed crimson, cyanosis, indigo, emerald. One drink was a sparkling silver liquid in a fluted glass flecked with gold. The floor was bright with black lights, the music pouring from the speakers little more than pulsing base over the chatter of the bar's patrons.

They called the drink Jim was nursing down "liquid hell" and it was obvious to see why. The bartender had poured him a few fingers of the rich mahogany-colored stuff, and as soon as it hit his mouth tears welled in his eyes. Any and all taste buds he had were destroyed in the wake of the first mouthful, the recoil like downing broken glass. It took three sips to numb him completely, a fourth to take his mind off the numbness, and a fifth just because he had forgotten just how good it felt to be utterly and properly drunk.

He'd pushed back the glass, and his last shred of sobriety, away by the time Khan slipped into the bar.

Jim was continually amazed by how well Khan _blended_, becoming little more than part of the scenery, outwardly ordinary and unassuming. The hem of his jacket swayed against his legs as he moved, slipping around people, ducking away from the hopelessly drunk, more a shadow than a man. Even though he looked as though he'd stepped directly out of one of Homer's epics, nothing about him was out of place lingering in a downtown bar.

Khan pulled out the chair beside him, motioning to the bartender wordlessly .Jim watched him with a closely guarded expression. A fresh glass of liquid hell was put in front of him, a stemless flute of cognac handed off to Khan- as well as a painfully forthright wink from the yellow-eyed K'Normian mixologist. Khan made no move to act on either. Instead his eyes found Kirk's, and for the first time they weren't hostile or piercing, didn't threaten to eviscerate him if he made a wrong move. They were a flat, ubiquitously pale blue, curious, careful.

"You said your blood was like liquor," Kirk remarks with easy neutrality, "If it's anything like this then I'm royally screwed." He gestures to his drink, then takes down another mouthful. Khan keeps his eyes on him.

"I've been told it's worse." He finally says, quiet. Kirk sees past the reply, knowing fully well that Khan isn't interested in the slightest in talking about the alcoholic merits of his blood.

"So you're back." Jim says, taking his time to do so, placing his drink back on its coaster, damp with condensation.

"Why am I not surprised. Eight years of solitary confinement?"

"And neurotherapy to alleviate my… _'homicidal tendencies'._" Khan adds.

"Yeah, that's the other part of your sentence I keep forgetting." Jim says, as if he had just remembered to pick up milk on the way home.

"Before my testimony it was, what, certain death?"

"I heard rumors of torture as well." Khan agrees, eyeing the flute of alcohol in front of him. Jim nods, tipping his own empty glass back and forth between finger and thumb.

"Here's what I don't get." Kirk says, pivoting in his chair. Khan can see the gauzy film of alcohol saturate the bottle blue of his eyes.

"You knew McCoy synthesized your blood for me. How? You didn't even know I died."

"Of course I did."

Jim was obviously not expecting that sort of answer. He blinked, eyebrows a straight line of confusion.

A small, taunting smile fetched Khan's lips.

"Your First Officer was prepared to avenge you, Kirk, to fight me to the death even though I could have killed him without thought. A very Hammurabian revenge. I saw his anger and your communications officer's attempt to stop him. It seems you have his humanity wrapped around your finger, Kirk."

Jim spluttered, disbelief coloring his face.

"He's not-"

"Yes he is." Khan interrupts, a note of finality to his statement. Jim swallows a nasty retort.

"My blood was the obvious answer, why your crew needed me alive, why Spock was prepared to end me, why he broke bone for you."

"Spock attacked you because he's my friend." Jim insists, tone glacial. Khan's smirk transforms from taunting to amused. He tilts his head.

"He is more human around you. He shows you his emotions, his shortcomings, and he cannot control himself around you. He fails to purge feeling when you stand beside him and you call it friendship. You make him weak and yet you still think he wouldn't risk _everything_ for you?"

To hear Khan talk about emotion, about humanity, about Spock like this unnerved Jim and suddenly he was increasingly wary of the augment that sat across from him. The danger in Khan lied primarily in his words- he could make you believe the unbelievable.

"Are we done here?" Kirk asks in clipped, brisk tones, standing. Khan traces his expression with his eyes, as if surveying a blueprint. then he silently rises, quitting the bar with Kirk in tow. They take the monorail out of the main congestion of the city, not speaking but finding synchronization in their steps. Jim's arms begin to itch again as he turns the key to his flat in the lock, wincing as he pushes to door open. Once inside, door safely closed behind them, Khan draws the syringe out of his pocket.

The effects of the alcohol are already beginning to be tempered by the pain in his arms. He knows he should've drinken more, let the liquor ease the grip the itch had on him. But he didn't trust Khan, only needed him.

Khan's blood looked darker than average human blood, but that might just have been the light or Jim's slightly unfocused vision. The vial was halfway full- or, as Kirk saw it, halfway empty.

"That's it?" He asks, brow furrowed.

"Your tolerance for it depends on how often you inject my blood and by how much." Khan's fingers slip around the handle of the syringe so that the needle points away from Kirk. He offers it to him with steady calm across his face.

"Shall we begin?"

Kirk, hesitation emanating from every motion, lets Khan place the injector in his hand. His eyes never waver.

"How do I know you haven't drugged it?"

Khan smiles quietly, like a cat eyeing a rather clever but ultimately doomed bird.

"You don't. All you have is my word and the faith that my time imprisoned has reformed me."

"Not a lot to go off of." Jim mutters, staring down at the syringe with its tapered shining needle and half-scarlet vial.

"What would you be, without me?" Khan muses quietly, "Starfleet isn't even aware that their flagship's captain has tainted blood. Imagine the tests they'll run on you, the endless uncertainty of if you'll ever truly heal. And I offer you this-" he gestures to the syringe, head cocked to one side as if delivering the punchline to a joke, "-a cure."

"This isn't a cure, it's a side-effect." JIm retorts, gripping the vial with white knuckles. The pain below his skin grows fierce.

Khan watches with a morbid kind of satisfaction as he slides the needle into his skin, letting their blood intermingle. Kirk stifles the small gasp rising up from his lungs and keeps his eyes on Khan, his very being screaming that this vulnerability was unacceptable. A wash of hot, pressing relief spills over him, the agony beneath his skin sated as the vial empties. His breath comes out all at once, chest narrowing, the final dregs of pain and blood disappearing. There's a spark of pale blue fire in the eyes Kirk hasn't stopped watching, Khan's. A pleasant ache runs through Kirk's veins as he hands back the syringe. Khan never looks away.

"How long will it last?" Kirk asks quietly, rubbing away the drop of blood that frames the injection sight. Khan seems to study the emptied vial with analytic care.

"Eight hours."

Kirk chokes, the memory of an all-consuming, unbearable pain flooding him. A pain he was finally freed from seconds ago.

_"Eight-"_  
Khan looks up, expression earnest.

"The more frequently you take my blood, the faster that number will dwindle. If I am to save you, you need to trust me."

Kirk's voice is a whip, hot with rage, "Trust you? _You killed Christopher Pike!_ You'd just as soon kill me as save me."  
_"I can't."_ Khan roars, the syringe clattering to the floor. The glass vial doesn't break, but his voice sounds like a shattering mirror. Every muscle within Kirk tightens, the war criminal before him morphing from potentially volatile to unmatchably vulnerable in a fraction of a second.

He reaches up and taps something below his ear, the glitter of metal winking at Kirk. The Starfleet captain takes in his desperation, his ill-hidden pain, the way his eyes bore into his own, imploring him to understand as a starving man implores for food.

In his raw silk voice, expression pleading, Khan explains.

"They wasted no expense to control me." Khan breathes, "The same section of Starfleet I was once part of created this. It would revolutionize imprisonment. They tested it on me."

Khan withdrew his hand, but Kirk kept his eyes on the small silver disc implanted in his skin.

"They call it BMT," Khan continues to Kirk's silence, voice hoarse and low in his chest as he enunciates every word, "Behavioral Modification Technology. You see, Kirk," a sadistic, sad lilt comes over his lips, " I can no more kill you than I can lie to you. The device changes my neurochemistry. I am utterly unable to kill, to maim, to in any way harm. I could never have drugged my blood. It has literally reformed me."  
Kirk blinks, "The neurotherapy?"

"Was this, yes." Khan smiles, as if he pities Kirk's astonished expression.

"Every word I say is true. I am unable to lie to you, Kirk, but even if I could, I wouldn't. Truths are more potent than lies."

"So you saving me, that's the device doing it?"  
Khan tilts his head to the side and offers his a quick half-smile.

"No, I'm saving you of my own free will."

Kirk scoffs, shying from Khan's completely open demeanor. His honesty makes him uneasy.

"Somehow I'm having a hard time believing that."

"Eight years ago you did the same for me." Khan counters, and for the first time the light in which Jim sees him shifts. He was irrefutably a monster, but he was a victimized monster still clinging to vague ideas of humanity. A monster of the morals he was trying to regain.

After Khan leaves, Kirk remains standing in the same spot, his newfound cure working its way into every vein. Khan was right, however much Kirk was loathe to admit it; his blood walked the thin double-edged blade of pleasure and pain. Like liquor it filled him with an anesthetic bliss. He barely felt through the rest of the night, body so beautifully numbed and the incorrigible pain finally removed, but there was always that corroding fear in the back of his mind- he was now dependent on Khan. Khan, whose actions had killed him, but whose volatile blood had saved him… if you could call this salvation.

Jim's eyes had barely drifted shut, head hitting an awaiting pillow, when the itch returned.

* * *

An entire nation's army fell before him, countless lives taken in his strategic advance, a clash of tack and timing.

Spock realized his folly too late as his opponent knocked down his king in one fell swoop. he stared down at the chessboard for a single second longer, contemplating, then looked up.

"Checkmate." Remarks Jim from across the table, smirk of victory hitching his lips. His arms were folded on the table, body leaned forward, eyes incredibly blue in the wash of noonday light.

"Your abilities have improved since we last played." Spock replies, calmly reorganizing his pieces into their original black mosaic. Jim did the same, sipping more of his coffee. He still had a formidable headache from the previous night's dance with liquid hell, but the caffeine somehow helped.

Jim moved first, a pawn placed two spaces forward. Spock retaliated by relocating his knight. Spock himself had taught Jim how to play 3D chess, and over time his reckless style had melded with the Vulcan's careful one. It had taken him little over a month to beat Spock the first time, an impressive feat.

While Spock contemplated his next move, Jim sat back, fiddling with the cap of his styrofoam coffee cup. The cafe they sat in wasn't too far away from Spock's apartment; a small but spartan living space just off the Thames. In a week he'd be on New Vulcan, visiting himself and his father, observing their progress and helping with efforts to rebuild their dwindling species. Jim was sad to know he'd be gone, even for a week.

"Spock," Jim says after the Vulcan places a rook where his pawn used to be, "D'you think that someone can change? Like, really change?"

Spock tilts his head, watching Jim as he in turn analyzes the chessboard.

"In what way do you refer?"

Jim's fingers hesitate over one of his snow-white pawns, eyes roving over each individual enemy piece. He answers without looking up.

"Say someone forces you to be emotional, emotional like humans are, permanently." Jim moves his piece and looks up into Spock's unreadable expression, "Have you changed? Or are you just being manipulated?"

Spock's voice is halting, face a mask of caution that Jim doesn't fully understand. He glances over the board but ultimately returns his gaze to Jim.

"I believe that both options are valid. My hypothetical self has indeed changed, but it isn't a change presented by my own choosing. One must also evaluate the circumstance of the change, because if I were to overcome it, I would return to my natural state of being, for better or worse.

"I do not believe that humans are able to ever fully change," Spock continues in response to Jim's frown, "as is true to many behaviorally-based species. Aspects of an individual may change, but an entire persona or state of mind seems far-fetched." As he speak, Spock deploys another knight.

"Yes," Jim argues, now more troubled than pensive, "But under force? Something that could protect itself from damage by changing its host?"

"It could not institute the same change on others outside its sphere of influence. For example, the force that changes my hypothetical self could not do the same to a hypothetical you."

"But if you told me someone forced you to change," Jim pressed, "then I'd have to make a decision on whether I agreed with that or not, which could lead me to try and reverse the effects of the change by taking away whatever made you different."  
Spock kept a level gaze on him as Jim leaned back in his chair, something like revelation bursting across his expression. The chessboard was completely forgotten in the intensity of their exchange. Jim ran a hand over his face, and Spock thought he might have heard _'sonofabitch'_ escape from Jim's lips as he exhaled.

"Is what you refer to complete conjecture? Or is there something outside of hypothetical means that you wish to discuss with me, Jim?"

Jim looks somberly at Spock for what feels like eons, cyanosis eyes boring into him as a knife would. Something flickers within them, like lightning on the glassy surface of the ocean.

"Yeah, just hypotheticals, Spock."

"You are sure?"

"Don't worry about it." Jim says, in a way that instantly makes Spock worry about it, but his voice has an absolute finality to it that eradicates Spock's response in his throat.

"Jim, may I ask a personal query?"

Suspicion inserts itself into the riot of emotions spreading across Kirk's expression.

"Sure." He says, finishing off his coffee and frowning at its emptiness. The frown dimples his cheeks slightly, eyebrows pushed together to form a crease between them, and for a moment Spock is utterly distracted by this, words unspoken on his tongue.

"I have noticed," Spock recovers, "that you have been displaying multiple symptoms of physical pain recently, but have not engaged Doctor McCoy on such a topic."

"Woah, woah, wait," Jim says, holding up his hands as Spock prepares to say more, "You talked to Bones about this? Doesn't that break, like, I dunno, patient-physician confidentiality or something?"  
"I am inquiring as your friend," Spock says, completely ignoring Jim's words but favoring him with an earnest gaze regardless, "if you are in pain, to let it be known to either Doctor McCoy or myself."

A massive knots knits itself in the center of Kirk's stomach. He marvels at such a prospect, to tell Spock the events of the last few days. He nearly does it, too, because it would be so much easier to open those floodgates, but then he remembers himself. If Spock were to know that he had collaborated with Khan, lethal war criminal and international terrorist, what would he do? Jim ought to think of the most logical course of action, in the fashion of Spock himself. It hurts to think that his best friend, his First Officer, his confidant, would throw him under the bus just as he did eight years ago before either of them had met Khan, but Kirk knew Spock. Spock would only permit Jim to be so reckless before drawing an uncrossable line. He suddenly began to think of Khan's words, how he had Spock's humanity wrapped around his finger, and now Spock's immediate concern for him…

He pushed the thought away, afraid of what it would look like fully-formed. Instead he tries to reply as quickly as possible before Spock notices his hesitation.

"I'm fine, Spock." He offers a feeble version of his usual patented smile, but his bravado has been replaced by uncertainty, and so it lacks its usual cocky luster. The Vulcan moves to argue, but Jim cuts him off.

"Pinky promise- I'm okay."

Spock is half-human, and he has his mother's eyes, and now Jim understand fully the consequences of that. They're sad, so sad, as if Spock can tell Jim is lying to him and cannot grasp as to why. Sadness, suspicion, caution, but above all there was a prevailing glimmer of trust, as though Spock was ready to take Jim's promise to heart because he cannot believe there to be a dishonest bone in Kirk's body. Trust was written in bold ink across his face, so blind and pure that it nearly shred's Kirk's lie in two. Instead, he simply offers a smaller smile and in the back of his mind, he thinks that this is a good metaphor for his life so far. A smile through pain.

Jim picks up one of his white knights, rolls it between finger and thumb, and puts it down in front of a pawn.

"Your move."


	3. Chapter 3

Khan slides his queen away from an advancing bishop, to rest directly in the path of an enemy rook. He steeples his fingers, closing his eyes, and silent thoughts seem to bounce around the walls, moving through the room as shadows do in early morning light. When he opens them again he moves the rook to topple the sable queen.

At his hip, his communicator rings.

Khan looks up, and into the glass panes of the window overlooking the skyline of London, letting it continue its klaxon for a long stretch of time. Finally he picks it up, already knowing the voice that would greet him as he does, and cuts across that voice to get the first word in.

"This line is secure, so speak freely, Kirk."

There is barely a pause before Jim responds, "I'm dying. I'm dying, right?"

Khan reevaluates his single-player chess match, silent. He deploys his knight, wondering, if Jim were here, if he would be behind the white pieces or the black ones.

"_Khan_. I need to know."

The augment sighs, eyes flicking up toward the ceiling, studying the scalloped design of the molding softening the corners where the walls meet, then back down to the windowed wall to his left, over the skyscrapers and historic buildings of London. The capital was alive, bustling with too many people doing too many things, always with too little time to do them.

"Yes."  
He hears the accompanying sigh from Kirk's end, one not of sadness but unrelenting anger.

"How long?" He asks through gritted teeth. Khan places his bishop where a pawn had been seconds before, utterly enraptured with his unfolding chess match's stratagem.

"The timeframe is not absolute. It varies, dependent on how strong your resolve is. Considering you have dealt so far with the effects for eight years, your remaining time will not be much, even with my blood."

Jim lapses into silence, then says, quiet, "Three weeks?"

"Possibly. Perhaps longer, if you can stabilize with the current dosage of my blood. But if the addiction strengthens you will die within days."

"We- _Christ_, we need to find a cure." Jim says, his voice breaking. The muscle in Khan's jaw twitches.

"There is none, Kirk. Not even I could-"

_"That's not fucking good enough!"_ Kirk snarls into the communicator, in its wake a heavy, tangible silence that folds itself over them like ocean waves. Khan's mind abandons the chessboard before him, taking interest in something much more remarkable; James Kirk's fury.

A small lilt softens Khan's mouth.

"I leave for the Enterprise in nineteen days. It has to be done by then."

"You give me nineteen days to do what could not be accomplished by the Federation's brightest minds in years."

"Yes."

"And why do you have such faith in my abilities, Kirk?"

"Because you're the most ingenious son of a bitch I know and I need you to do this."

"I thought as much. I just wanted to hear you say it." Khan replies in a voice like honey poured over shards of glass, "It seems you've learned not to underestimate me."

"Believe me, I'm not making that mistake again." Kirk says, words edged with ire and sharpened by anger.

"I'm going to require equipment. This will be no small task."

"I figured. I can get you the best of the best, just give me a list."

"Agreed."

Kirk can feel the bemusement coming from over the other end, and it grinds against his already dangerously short temper, like stone on dry wood.

"You have something else to say?" He asks, venom in his voice like snake fangs.

"Does it concern you, Kirk, that you are so agreeable to lying and stealing from your friends? I knew you to be a man of conscience, even under threat. Tell me, what has changed?"

Khan's words were as devastating as physical blows, his tone of pity and triumph like acid dousing Jim. Because he was _right_. He'd lied to Spock, lied through his teeth that he was fine, even as he was dying. He'd lied for eight years out of fear, and now he was willing to plunge even further into these abhorrent depths. Jim closes his communicator, wordless, as the hatred he had directed at Khan all this time slowly begins to turn inward, before the augment could add more verbal kindling to the fire.

That's what makes Khan so dangerous, Kirk reminds himself, determined to never forget that one absolute fact. He could tear you wide open without ever touching you, make you turn against yourself with a word.

Kirk runs his hands over his face, carding through his hair, and glances around him. His apartment was exactly as he had left it six months ago, when he'd last been home for shore leave. His bed was in the corner, a stack of November-weather-proof blankets and a few thin pillows, pushed up against the window, a futon sitting in front of his television, a scrap of a kitchen and a barely-touched desk taking over the rest of his space at the other end of the flat. On the nightstand stood the two holoframes he had brought aboard the _Enterprise_ with him. One held an album of family photos, lazily flicking through them as the screen pixelated and re-pixelated; one of his dad, an arm wrapped around his mom, before either his brother or him were born. There were a chaste few of him and his mom, him and his brother, the three of them together; New Year's, Christmas, birthdays. The other frame had pictures of his other family- his crew. One of him and McCoy at graduation, grinning in their regulation scarlet uniforms, another of Chekov on his eighteenth birthday, sitting beside his navigations station, Sulu, Uhura, and even one of Spock. He remembers when that particular picture was taken with a special kind of fondness. Chekov had held the camera, but just as he'd been about to click the button, McCoy- who had been walking behind him- had slipped and fallen. The result was a picture of Kirk, an arm slung around Spock's shoulders, eyes wide with delight and captured in mind-laugh, head tilted just fractionally back. Even Spock looked suitably surprised, but captured in that moment of happiness beside Jim, not at all like his usual stoic self. It was Jim's favorite picture, though he could never place as to why.

Jim smiled, a slight but genuine curl of his lips, tinged with unspeakable sadness, and gazed at the two frames, their subjects ever changing.

"I'm dying." He said, in his lowest tones, aloud. The sound of his voice, so small in the wide space of his apartment, was both comforting and terrifying. Heat and then pain blistered his eyes, pins and needles running across his nose and then suddenly it was hard to breathe. His vision blurred and sank into meaningless colors. He slides down the wall behind him until he's sitting, knees curled in toward his chest, like some sort of blossom that refused to open its petals. An ache hollows his lungs, he cradles his head between his hands as the floodgates break and rush open, and he begins to cry. Angry, violent, wrenching sobs splitting him in two, cracking the air around him like thunder clapping, and wracking his body. He gasps, but the air isn't coming in fast enough to balance the tears spilling, pouring out. Panic and fear clutch at his chest, each tinted crimson with his anger. It felt as though he were choking. His head rolls back until he can feel the welcome cold pressure of the wall behind him, all drywall and paint and pipes barely broken in.

He says it again, to a dismal, disdainful silence. And again, and again, he's screaming, until the words are incoherent with his sobbing, until his throat is torn raw and his eyes are _bleeding_ tears but he's still saying it because he feels like maybe he could wear out the truth of it, until it felt like a lie on his tongue. Maybe if he said it enough it wouldn't be real, like the mythologies of old. His lungs cry in time with his eyes, the hot salty water pooling under the collar of his shirt, down his bare skin. He wishes it was enough to wash the pain eating at his bones away. He wishes it was enough to wash everything away.

* * *

The second injection felt just as euphoric as the last, like he'd doused himself in cold water that seeped past his skin, like he'd tasted the wine of the gods, and now everything else he would drink from now on would taste of ash. Khan watched him as before, though it made Kirk more uneasy than ever. The wink of the contrivance behind the superhuman's ear made it that much worse.

But the ecstasy of the craved blood was short-lived, a briefer moment than Kirk remembered it being. He opened his eyes to a nauseating vertigo, the entire world tipping like a storm-caught ship. He cringed, falling back, and was only vaguely aware of something moving with him. Pulling the chair from the kitchen out underneath him, guiding hand steady on his shoulder, pushing with gentle insistence into it. Kirk closes his eyes to the stomach-churning whirlpool, and remembered a lesson from the Academy on surviving in vacuum. He searches for the procedure in his brain. As he was taught to, Jim empties his lungs in one massive exhale, shoving his panic out of the way as he did with practiced ease, and gritted his teeth.

When he dares to look again, Khan is peering into his face. So it was him, that motion. He's knelt before the chair Jim sits in, in the most inferior position Jim had ever seen him in, for the first time not dominating the entire room with his exuding air of regal power. What he wouldn't give for this to be his captain's chair, and for Khan to have chains around his wrists.

At this angle, the light pouring across Khan's face is slashed by shadow. His eyes are a dark blue underneath the line of his eyebrows. You could cut diamond on his cheekbones, tear a rift in spacetime on his jawline.

"Side-effects." Khan murmurs, never leaving the lock of Jim's gaze. Kirk was vaguely unnerved by his own noticing of the war criminal. He'd studied John Harrison's an infinite number of times, chipping away to find a possible psychopathic motive for bombing a Starfleet Archive. But in the flesh Khan could not be done justice- so artfully, deceptively delicate, he looked, so very much like glass.

'Shards_ of glass'_, Jim corrected himself.

"Let me see the vial." Khan commands, voice still resonant and hushed. Jim numbly obeys, the dregs of vertigo having a paralytic lock on the rest of his body.

Khan draws another half-vial from his arm, Jim watching with ugly fascination as black crimson flows from the pallid surface, a silent grimace transforming Khan's features. Here was the gargoyle to his usual pristine statuesque profile.

"What are you-" Jim manages, trying to keep his stomach inside his body. Blood pulses in his ears, although now it is only partially his own. The other part belonged to Khan.

"That depends on your perception." The augment comments, turning Jim's arm over to expose the veins of his wrist, gently, as if trying not to break him. For the first time Jim realizes just how compromised he is. Khan could slash his skin open, leave him to bleed out the blood which hated him, twist his neck in a full circle with the slightest of efforts, bash his skull in, stab him through the heart...

Khan's skin is cold as his fingers brace his wrist, easing the needle into the arm with all the care of a lover, Jim barely feeling the puncture. He drained the blood and pulled away, but his eyes were still draped across Kirk's face, his hair, his ears, his lips and nose, his own eyes watching him right back.

Khan glanced down, to the outstretched arms of the _Enterprise's_ captain before his kneeling form, and the drop of blood that ringed this newest injection sight. The other was already healing. Khan frowned at it, and Jim could feel the extra vial of liquid heaven open up its ecstasy within him, sating his untamable hunger for it, tilting his head back with the pleasure of it. A thumb gently swiped away the lingering blood, lighter than a kiss, leaving a small streak of vermillion behind. The motion unleashed a shiver down Jim's body, and he felt how _close_ Khan was to him, knelt, radiating heat but his skin so touchably cold. The gesture sent shockwaves of sensation across him.

"I have either saved your life," Khan murmured, resonant voice little more than a pensive purr, utterly delicious in this tense silence between them, eyes trained with dedication on Kirk's blood-tattooed skin with something inhuman held within them.

"Or I have condemned you to a lethal addiction."

* * *

"I can't go giving this stuff away willy-nilly, Jim! We're talking about hundreds of dollars here."

"Bones, look, it's not like I'm asking you to rude around naked on the bridge, okay?" _'No, I'm asking something much worse,'_ "I just need a couple of things."

"Jim-"

"I told you. Chekov asked me if I could let get you to let him borrow some equipment. I know you an extra set of whatever the hell medical machines lying around. Please, Bones?"  
"And the kid didn't call me on his own because..."

The lies slid willingly from his tongue and through his teeth as if he'd been born to say them, to say these traitorous words to his best friend.

"Do you _know_ what your bedside manner's like? You're a bona-fide Grinch with access to meds."

"Makes about as much sense as a rodeo with no horses, Jim, but..." There's a long, weary pause from the other end of the line. Jim bites his lip, knocking his forehead against the wall he leaned against in impatience.

"Fine. Send me the list and I'll let you have them tonight."

"Bones, I could kiss you. You're the best, you know that?"

"Jim."

"Right, sorry."


	4. Chapter 4

The sky spit down at the city, layering everything in sight with a fine coat of drizzle. The hidden shining sun turned the omnipresent clouds white, as if the sky had been bled of color. Hundreds of people scurried along sidewalks and monorail stations, subway platforms and asphalt roads, some in the drab grey uniform of Starfleet and others in scrubs, a few in suits befitting lawyers, bedecked with briefcases and Starbucks cups. Jim's fingers absently trace the Starfleet insignia on his black shirt as he shrugs his jacket tighter around him, charting a route among this white-collar crowd. He wonders, the thought numb with shame, how many Federation regulations he's so far in the past week. The number probably couldn't intimidate his standing record- two-hundred and seven- but the pressure of his guilt wasn't in the least bit less heavy.

London was as tall as it was wide, a sprawling, living mass made out of steel and glass panes. Skyscrapers eclipsed the sun, low-flying shuttled darting about like engorged birds of prey overhead. Transport cars ran along thin monorail lines that laced the sky. And somewhere in this thriving pool of people- Human, Vulcan, Orion, Deltan, Xannon, Andorian, K'Normian...

Was Khan.

The intrinsically unique, induplicable, genetically superior Khan. The Khan who hadn't killed him yet. The Khan who looked at him like prey, but also like Tellar Prime's second moon. Fascinated but imperious.

Bookshops and cafes opened their doors, turning on their lights. Neon 'open' signs flickered to life, a hint of color in this drab, monochromatic Tetris-like world. People filed into the subway station, down a flight of stairs into the subterranean transport that opened up on the sidewalk like a cavernous dark mouth. Jim Kirk carried a duffel, and a bit of blind hope. Street signs directed him on where to go, and stoplights told him how fast, and all the while he was just another figure in the background, like the guard in _Aida_, just another component to this massive machine. It was an odd feeling, unsettling, he thought. Jim was used to being a fixed point, a crucial part of Starfleet, the flagship's captain, the person who made calls that could save or end hundreds of people's lives on a daily basis.

So this is how he does it, Jim realizes. Khan instills terror from behind the scenes, wielding his pretty words better than any phaser, targeting the people who were just part of the backdrop, a piece of the scenery, run-of-the-mill, untouched by greatness.

The London Eye loomed a few miles off, herded in by the waterfront to its left. Apartment complexes helixed upward, as if trying to uproot their foundations and take off into the sky.

"Jim."

Kirk started, every cell within him telling him not to turn around and look that voice in the eye. He held completely still, even though he was in the middle of the sidewalk, parked in front of one of the said towering complexes to his right, its shadow thrown over him in the early morning light.

Rush-hour commuters streamed down the sidewalks to the shuttle stations. Every single one of them hadn't yet reached their destination, wouldn't until late morning, still had their destinations in mind. But Jim was suddenly _at_ his destination, and slowly turned to meet him.

Khan's eyes found the duffel with lightning speed, and locked onto it like a starship's photon cannon targeting system. They then slowly trickled back up to Kirk's face, which he's trying to keep an unreadable mask. He was almost successful, too, in his mimicry of Spock, but Jim was not so much an open book as an audio narration of one; all you had to do was look and his emotions would tell themselves to you in plain English.

People pushed passed them and their utterly silent exchange, but seemed to part around Khan in a way that they didn't around Jim. Like Earth's magnetic field deflects solar radiation, it seemed as though an invisible hand was gently guiding foreign bodies away from his form, giving him a halo of empty space in which he stood alone, in the same black Starfleet uniform Jim had met him in eight years ago. The sight of the chevron-like sigil of Jim's home pinned to Khan's chest unfurled an icy anger within him, one that would like nothing better than to reach out and take the damn thing away. He didn't deserve to wear _anything_ that affiliated him with Starfleet, the same establishment that he'd tried to tear down brick by interstellar brick.

"Khan." Jim returns smoothly, adjusting the bag slung around his shoulder, its strap pressing reassuringly against his clavicle.

The augment cocks his head as an inquisitive puppy might, mulling something over in his mind, but there was nothing so innocent in his expression.

"How interesting," he finally says, as if Jim's actions had spoken volumes, "You are so committed to self-preservation that it transcends your ridiculous sense of honor. I would've thought your pride to be indominable, but I have been wrong about you before. Shall we go inside?"

Khan gestures to the looming tower they stand in the titanic shadow of; a construct of flawless, glittering silver, as if it had been made of liquid mercury, windows in rose-gold frames, the steps rising from the sidewalk to the entrance cobbled marble. Jim's eyebrows go up at once.

'221 Baker street', the plaque next to the door says when they get close enough to see it clearly. This was where Khan had set up their rendezvous, then, Jim remembers seeing the address on his pager the night before, but why _this_ place he had no idea. This was probably the most conspicuous place imaginable. Kirk frowns when Khan holds the door open for him. None of this felt right, like a jigsaw that was missing its edge pieces. His nerves began to pique.

"Probably not the least noticeable place you could've chosen." Kirk mutters as they cross the spacious first floor- little more than a reception area decorated with plush loveseats arranged around a hovertable and a desk against the back wall manned by a uniformed Andorian. A few suit-and-tie Deltans ticked away on their laptops around the hovertable, oblivious to the unlikely duo's entrance. In fact, no one payed them a spare glance at all, as though they were shadows against this elegant backdrop. They slipped into an elevator at the far side of the reception floor without being acknowledged by any of the building's occupants. Khan was utterly relaxed through this whole exchange, like it was an everyday occurrence he had long since learned to accept. Kirk, on the other hand, became increasingly anxious about the odd transaction.

Khan finally cocks an eyebrow in his direction.

"I expected more curiosity out of you."

"Yeah, well, you expect a lot of things out of me, but not all of them pan out," Kirk replies cryptically, with more than just a dash of snark in his tone, annoyed by his lax (though still flawless) posture and abject inability to grasp how dangerous their circumstance was. Without that BMT chip regulating his doubtlessly psychotic genius, the contents of Jim's bag could be a nuke in the making. But Kirk wasn't sure if he was willing to put Khan's comparable docility completely to the neurotherapeutic device.

"But I guess I'll give; where exactly are we?"

Khan smiles, a tiny and pitiful excuse of one, but genuine nonetheless.

"Oh, how oblivious you are, Kirk. It's _fascinating_ how your intellect limits even rudimentary observations."

"Don't say that," Jim snaps abruptly, eyes fixed o the flickering display of the elevator's singular screen, numbers of the floors churning by, "'Fascinating'. Don't."

Khan's gaze could melt tungsten, Jim is sure of it, his wryness clearer than plexiglass and twice as strong.

"We're in my apartment building," the augment at last relents, "approved of and monitored by the Federation. My own personal prison, given it's infinitely more comfortable than my previous experiences." Khan makes a lazy gesture toward the gold-plated guardrail framing the inside of the elevator.

"Your-"

Jim's nerves go to Warp Factor 9, a strangling rush of anxiety and fear overcoming him.

"No, not happening," Kirk declares, thumbing a button on the panel. The elevator glides to a comfortable stop. Khan regards him with detached interest, as if he was reading a book that had suddenly taken a turn for the unexpected.

"Like I trust a tiny metal disc to stop you from snapping my neck and tearing me in half."

Khan frowns, "That seems redundant."

Jim levels a tried-and-true-I'm-a-Federation-flagship-captain glare at him. The augment relents.

"I have no intent to kill you, as I believe we've established. Nor do I possess the capacity. This 'tiny metal disc' is potent enough to render any violent ideas I have null. As I've told you." His tone suggests an adult chastising a child. He nods to Jim's bag, which he's holding the strap of with a white-knuckled death grip.

"Your paranoia is prudent, but there is no secret motive of mine that you have to uncover. There is no grand scheme, no double meaning to what I tell you. My only concern now is finding an impossible cure."

"But _why?"_ Jim insists. The elevator is small, and Khan is standing closer to Jim than he would have preferred, his preference being at least ten feet. His shoulders burn in that familiar way he's come to resent, the skin of his biceps, the lengths of his forearms, his very veins calling out, longing for Khan's ambrosiac blood. It was a deep-seeded, terrifying hunger.

The elevator's frosted glass mirrored walls reflect their distorted figures back at them, taut and still, one regal and beautiful and the other trying to pry away knowledge that did not want to be spoken. Khan smirks at him pityingly. His reflections copy the movement, poor mimicries of the original Khan.

"Every lie you pass as a truth, every request you ask of me to save your life, these things are integral to your nature. You would sooner become the monster you once looked at with hatred than die the hero of your story. You and I are more alike than you yet realize, and that's why I will save your life. So that you can live with the guilt of your lies, and realize that a villain is a victim who chose simply to live."

Jim is on him faster than words can express, moving with a speed born of untempered hatred, like glowing white-hot steel from the forge. He braces his arm against Khan's neck, pressing against his windpipe, the sound of the augment's body hitting the wall behind him a metallic crunch and the quiet sound of glass cracking. Khan's eyes are bright with anger, but he makes no move to fight back; he doesn't have to. Jim's expression is penance enough.

"I _died_, eight years ago, to save my damn crew from you. Don't _tell_ me I wouldn't die the hero._ I already have."_

Khan has the mettle to smile at Kirk's disgust, his astonishment at his own ballistic strength.

"But now you won't, and it has made you stronger." Khan finishes for him, still trapped between the fissured glass and Jim's stoic form.

Kirk eyes the fuzzy reflection of himself in the broken mirror behind Khan's shoulder. There was fear there, and rage.

"I am not like you." Jim breathes, vehement, as if uttering a prayer. His blood burns for Khan's in this maddening proximity, intensifying its insatiable need.

"It isn't just my blood you crave anymore, is it?" Khan murmurs back, eyes dripping all over Kirk's face, noticing with triumph the shift in his expression from shock to abject, shattered denial. Jim glowers, moving away. Khan matches his motions down to the centimeter, keeping his eyes level. They burn, white-hot, like Jim's blood.

_"Is it?"_

"I'm not like you," Jim repeats hollowly, shaking with fear and fury, "you made me into this. Into a mon-"

However quick Jim had moved, Khan's speed is at least doubled, his power tripled, his body a hurricane and his execution masterful. Every atom of oxygen flees Jim's body as he's turned around, slammed with zealous intent into the indentation he's just made, only partly catching the black lustful glitter of Khan's pale eyes before everything becomes heat and pressure and a throbbing, starving ache somewhere inside him.

He breathes Khan in because it is the only air he has, and because it is beautiful, addicting, like his blood. A hand is at his hip, painful as it flattens him against the wall, another at his throat, cold, long fingers curled at the junction of his jaw and his windpipe, tilting his head up and _Jesus Christ_the pain is pure bliss, the crushing force of Khan's lips on his own, the sensation of drowning in his presence, body craving him. Khan keeps him still, and while Kirk's mind demands he tear away, to move, to get as far as possible from this one elevator in this one building in this one city, the rest of him is thoroughly deaf to it. His lips are like glass, caressing even as they bruise him, and Jim can feel his own fingers begin to curl around the thin fabric of Khan's shirt. Kissing him was almost as euphoric as a vial of his blood. It's only as Jim presses back against Khan's domineering hold, their bodies slotting together, tight in anger and tension, that Khan breaks. He steps away, eyes opening languidly, still dark and sparkling, utter and all-consuming desire written in bold ink across his figure.

Air rushes to meet Jim, finally, and he's gasping, not knowing how long he's been without it and not really caring.

"_Fuck_." He grounds out, hating how wrecked his voice has become, just like the rest of him. He slams a fist against the elevator's control panel trying to breathe while not looking at Khan. If he looks he knows all the air he's recollecting will be knocked out of him again. The elevator glides to the next level and opens to an empty hallway. Kirk shrugs out of the duffel bag and crosses the threshold, away from the ruined lift, trying to remember how to move. He faces away from Khan until the doors close behind him, then curls his fingers through his hair until his head begins to hurt again. His lips are numb and heavy and every part of him wants to crawl into the deepest void imaginable to wait out this revolting feeling, but he makes himself stand still until his lungs remember how to do their jobs. He crosses his arms to suppress the pain in his marrow, a pain so sated by being close to Khan. Being dangerously, passionately close to him.

"fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck..." Jim breathes to work the bruised numbness out of his lips put there by Khan, to get out the tainted air of his breath.

He doesn't remember it ever feeling like this, the after part. Angry kissing was not a stranger to him, male, female, or asexual, but he'd never reacted so _viscerally_ to another person's desire, albeit a conflicted reaction. Jim tips his head back, alone in this anonymous hallway, and tells himself that maybe Khan is right.

Maybe he was actually becoming a monster.

* * *

Kirk fights it reverently, drowning in the next glass of liquor he pours for himself- or, almost drowning. His hairline is dewed with fine beads of sweat, the air around him feeling too close, too hot, too real. He downs the whiskey in a single shot, feeling the alcohol spread across his body, warm and slightly bitter, and rests his head on his arms, crossed on the table he sits at.

He'd cranked the A/C up to about negative eight degrees, even though it was mid-November, to drain out this fever under his skin, but so far the only thing that was taking the edge off was copious amounts of liquor, 80-proof bottles of liquified arsenic. He was just drunk enough to be certain of a hangover in the morning- night had already lulled the rest of the city into a stupor- and the anguish of his... his _craving_ to be somewhat tamed.

Jim exhaled, the whisper of his breath amplified in his ears, long and slow until his chest began to ache, a lover without its love.

This was his fourth glass, his vision already careening and banking whenever he tried to focus on something. His blood yearned regardless, for something it couldn't, it shouldn't, have. Jim felt the same manic fear he had eight years ago, after that first visit to McCoy, when the burning had first began its genesis, but there was no sign he'd been anything but healthy. The addiction transcended viscera and bone.

He couldn't get it out of his head, a closed-circuit memory, still as vivid as the moment as it happened. Khan's hands, his lips, _God_, his _body_, against Jim's, his natural coldness white-hot where their skin met, but the worst part had been the _pressure_. Such animalistic desire to move impossibly closer, to simply melt into his body, and finally, mercifully, be released of the pain.

Jim scowled, wolfing down another tall glass of amber whiskey. The taste was sharp against his tongue, almost like... almost like...

"_Stop_ it." Kirk snarls at himself, measuring ever-more liquor into his cup. He'd drink himself stupid, he swore, if that's what it took. Drink until everything vanished and he fell into the partial oblivion of sleep.

The apartment echoed with the echo of sound of a knock at his door, like a distant gunshot.

It was a really bad idea, Jim decided, to get up, as he got up. Standing was more like trying to fight gravity for temporary control of his body. He swore obscenely, using the walls as braces and vaults to push himself off of. His arms still hurt, raw and blushing red from where he'd scratched at them, succumbing to the itch. Absently, he prayed to anyone listening that it wasn't a Federation officer standing outside his door.

It wasn't.

Jim wrenched the door open, then stumbled back, hit with a sudden rolling wave of _want_.

Khan stepped into the room before Jim could recover, moving in tight, strained motions, shutting the door behind him. He frowns, studying the_Enterprise's_ captain as one would a particularly difficult sudoku puzzle.

"You're drunk." He remarks.

"Very," Agrees Kirk, a little wobbly, as he tries to appear at least remotely imposing in front of this war criminal, "Which is why you need to leave. Now."

Khan remains steady, silent, utterly poised as he analyzes Jim with his cryptic blue eyes. His hands, at his sides, curl ever so slightly. Then, with speed unparalleled that only Khan could possess or utilize so artfully, he seizes one of Jim's wrists, flipping it over to reveal the pink blush of his forearm, the thin white indentations running along the skin like ghost cuts. Khan says nothing for a long time, but his skin on Jim's is enough to make the captain's very being howl, thirsty.

"Side-effects." Khan finally murmurs, as though to himself, and releases Jim. His gaze moves back to arrest itself on Kirk's, the palest of blues and yet so dark, almost virulent in its intensity.

"Why did you come here? And how did you get past the front door?" Jim asks, and it's stupid of him to do so, because Khan would never have told him, even sober. The door to the apartment complex was locked, and tenants could only get in by key or by buzzing someone up. Khan, brilliant as he was, was also talented at comically simple electric reruns. All he had to do was electrically stimulated one little circuit to give the door the impression that he'd been buzzed in.

Khan ignores Jim's concerns.

"It's been getting worse, hasn't it?' He says instead, the words low in his chest, a divine baritone that you could drown in. Jim eyes him, silent, but his jaw ripples, his own body betraying him. Khan took a step forward, his liquid grace traveling across every muscle. He exudes power like radiation, but it is a gentle, caressing power full of promise. A persuasive silver-tongued power.

"No. We're not doing this." Jim growls, scrabbling at the dregs of his sobriety, trying to piece them back together, but it was as hopeless as trying to catch smoke with your bare hands. Khan lifts an elegant eyebrow.

"I won't hurt you. It was never my plan."

Jim moves back again, but runs out of space and ends up flush against the wall behind him. Khan's calm was hypnotic. Almost paralytic. His blood cries out, anguished, for this augmented distortion of a man.

"Then what is you plan?" Jim tries instead, momentarily victorious over his own traitorous body. Khan grins wickedly at him, secretive, and his frame is lined up with Kirk's down to the fraction of an inch, but it is only a few steps away from the captain's.

"You are so stubborn." He says. The air around him is far too dense, too warm, his vision is swimming without hope of making it to shore, and everything revolves around this man. Like planets orbiting the sun, like a compass needle invariably pointing north.

"My plan was never to kill you. I wanted to bide my time, wait for the opportune moment, break the modification technology's hold on me, then smuggle my crew to safety. But then I had to put that aside, to save you. What you don't realize, Jim," Khan takes another one of those precious few, lethal steps forward, and all Jim can hear is a high, thin whine in his ears as the _want_ reaches out, trying to take that final step but being denied by the rest of him. He vaguely realizes that Khan is calling him by his first name.

"Is that I will never fail. I will remain, forever, your perfect enemy."

Jim swallows, hard. Khan tilts his head, so close they nearly touch. The augment can smell Kirk's cologne from here, a heady musk coating his skin, can see the conflict waging war inside him- fear, lust, anger, desire, revulsion, hunger. He wore his heart on his sleeve. Khan would make it bleed.

"_Stop it."_ Kirk growls at him. His very presence adds kindling to the fire he was trying to extinguish. Khan leans in, an inch, maybe two, but it's enough for them to be irrevocably close. Close enough to taste the other's breath, see it move through his body, living art.

"You need me," Khan's eyes are supernova bright, and just as breath-taking, recherche cyanosis, set in his expression of dark amusement and lasciviousness.

However little room was left, Kirk could slip away, shove him off. But then again, no, he couldn't. Because however long he stayed like this, deliciously, achingly close, the pain dissipated. The agony cleared, the proximity almost as good as Khan's intoxicating blood.

Khan is looking at him like a wolf might a deer, but somehow Jim isn't terrified as he suspected he should be.

"And I want you." All traces of amusement are gone from him, nothing left but ravenous desire burning within his expression.

They almost touch, bodies brushing together, and the silence is a vice, keeps them in this eternal grey area, this moment that lasts eons, where the decision is made or it is not. The choice is presented and the selection made.

"Say it," Khan whispers into the quiet between them, as if the words had nowhere they'd rather be than hanging between them like a noose, "I want to hear you."

Jim's will snaps like lightning arching through the clouds.

_"Kiss me._"

The force is assaulting, it is lacerating, it is the bliss that heaven is made of. Khan's hands are at his jaw, cradling his face, body moving to trap Jim's against the wall. Their hips glance off each other's as atoms do, Jim's fingers winding into Khan's hair, drawing him exceedingly close. They fit together like books on a shelf, lips melding into a ravenous dance of teeth and tongues and lust and complete abandon.

Khan's hands move to grip Jim's hips fingers digging in so deep that the captain whimpers in pain. The augment slams him back, trying not to break him, everything else around them a fury of heat and the _want_ finally, finally, being sated. Kirk bit down, tugging at Khan's hair as he did, but his teeth sliced skin. The metallic flavor of blood seeped into Jim's mouth.

Khan ripped himself away from the passionate embrace, eyes heavy and dark with his not-nearly-full appetite for the captain. He touched his lip, and came away with a red stain gleaming on his fingertips. Kirk was staring, breathing heavily, his face twisted with the force of his own willpower. The blood welled across Khan's lip, crimson and beautiful, and the only thing that entered Jim's mind was _'I need it to be mine'._

Khan lowered his hand, understanding the captain's compromising dilemma.

"Take it." He says, the words falling out with husky urgency. Jim glances at him, tearing his gaze away from the alluring droplets of blood. There was defiance in him now, fear.

"No."

"Take it." Khan repeats, his hands finding Kirk's wrists and pinning them to the wall above his head. His cold skin douses the feverish heat in his bones.

Jim grits his teeth, caught somewhere in the standstill between yes and no, trying with desperation not to obey the maelstrom opening itself up within him. He inhales, and the sharp scent of the blood, now smeared across Khan's lips, pushes him over the edge and falling into the yawning black abyss.

He's completely unaware of anything but Khan, contorting his body to meld against his, hands above his head white-knuckles fists. He sucks the offended lip clean, tongue gliding to lick away any remaining drops. His body stops screaming, lips moving with Khan's in a practiced rhythm. He arches his back into the augment, their hips brushing.

Kirk bites down again, and again, until the blood is streaming into his mouth, his tongue swiping away rivulets of the heavenly substance. However good the liquor was, this was exponentially better. Every time Khan opens his mouth to the pain, drinking in Kirk's air as his own, Jim lashes out, creating new wounds to bleed dry. All the while Khan's clever fingers moved across his body, pressing at his waist to move closer, knotting through his hair, slipping down his neck, coursing under his shirt. He traced Kirk like a map, memorizing his every line, every movement, every obscene little noise he made against Khan's mouth. Kirk's hands in turn pinioned him in place, one crushing into his naval with intense strength, the other cradling the crown of his head, drawing him down into Jim's lips.

"_God I want you."_ He murmurs against Khan's skin as the augment sows greedy kisses along Kirk's jaw, down his neck, mapping the line of his collarbone. Khan merely growls in response, and when he nips at Jim's skin, just below his jugular, the captain's head goes back, leaning against the wall, eyes closed, exposing that lovely throat of his.

Khan's lips glide up to the curve of his jaw, then back down, sucking little pinpricks of pleasure at the hard line of his windpipe, the groove of his Adam's apple, the sensitive flesh at the very base of his neck near the clavicle. Jim manages tiny, breathy gasps, clawing at Khan's sides, the pain of his ecstasy exquisite.

"Khan-" Jim hisses as the augment finds his way back up to his mouth, sucking gently, lips still tasting of his own blood. His fingers are roaming, tracing the dip at the small of Jim's back. Kirk presses his palms flat against Khan's chest, feeling the motion of his breath and the glitter of his dark eyes, foreheads touching, every now and then stealing a voracious kiss from the other.

"You, me, bed, now." Jim growls at him, animalistic, and he wonders somewhere in the back of his mind, if this is what Vulcan Pon Farr feels like; wanton madness.

Khan pries himself away with his superhuman strength, bracing his arms on the wall behind Jim, trapping the captain again. His eyes are closed, as if concentrating very hard.

"No. Not while you're drunk."

Jim squirms against him, his touches are pleading, his resolve is gone. But Khan's is not. He presses Jim back against the flat of the wall, moving his own form away as not to be tempted.

"No. Where is the syringe."

Kirk looks at him with his lust-saturated blue eyes, eyes that could cut diamond but instead chose to ravage him. He finally relaxes, leaning his head against Khan's, watching him. He steals a kiss, and then two, until he feels Khan's jaw harden and the augment has to physically lock his muscles in order not to lose control.

"Tell me."

"The kitchen, second drawer." Kirk surrenders. Khan is off of him in an instant, and he feels the loss like a cold, empty, cavernous hole. He tips his head back and tries to relearn breathing until he feels the ache of a needle puncturing his skin. Khan, as always, watches Kirk as he comes undone by the intoxicant.

"I will stay, if you want me to." Khan murmurs, brushing his lips and nose against Kirk's ear. Jim's fingers curl around his neck as if it were a piece of territory.

"You really didn't think you were leaving before dawn, did you?"

Khan smiles into Jim's skin coyly, his warmth like a sedative. His teeth graze Kirk's ear, just enough to make him shiver, then harder, so that he digs his fingers into his skin. The pain is pure delight, his hands slipping down the lengths of Jim's inner forearms until they can hold his hips, curling into shapes of caressing tenderness, pulling him in to reconnect with his frame. Soon all Jim can do is melt into the sweet touches, biting his lip to stifle a series of delightful little moans.

But in his mind, over and over, is still running the phrase,

"My perfect enemy."


End file.
